I think the "free" in "free elections" kind of covers those sorts of shenanigans. Western civ has been familiar with autocrats carefully maintaining a charade of democracy and rule-of-law at least since the time of Augustus Caesar.
Free_and_fair_election indicates that about half of current countries meet the standards of a free and fair election. Western civilization is familiar with sham elections from multitudes of experience.it looks like in this case you may have simply overlooked the critical word "increase". I was describing the derivative of the level of freedom, not the absolute level itself. Of course people are freer now than we were in the days of royal absolutism; I was in no way, shape or form arguing for a return to the laws of kings. Our culture well remembers how awful those times were; but many of us seem to have a collective amnesia about how very much worse the times that preceded them were.
You misspelled "It sucks here -- looks like a good place to stash criminals".Sure it is. It's a local tradition that the country belongs to you, if you turn up from England and say "It's nice here, so it belongs to me now". The existing residents don't get to say "no".
That's not how it works. People are not logic engines. It is entirely normal for people to believe premises but not believe conclusions that logically follow from their own premises. Sometimes that's rank inconsistency; sometimes it's just withholding judgment because they haven't yet worked out whether it's a logical consequence of their beliefs or not.
Certainly: the same authority our society places over nearly everything in life, democracy. When the members of society have an unresolvable dispute and neither side can persuade the other, the general custom is to let the majority have their way and have the minority suck it up. It's a very practical custom -- counting noses is a pretty reliable rough-and-ready algorithm for figuring out in advance which side would win the fight if the people started killing one another over the dispute. Since the same side wins whether we fight it out or not, nobody has an incentive to start a civil war.
Oh for the love of god!
You misspelled “law enforcement”.
Bullshit. In this venue, that which can be shown to cause the least harm wins the argument. I have provided empirical support. Ems has shown that B20 is her champion, that’s all.
How about we stop with analogies? Argument via analogy is just void. I can't defeat the proposition, so let me do a little creative rework.
You mean like when you attributed malice to the Democrats for keeping abortion from being passed as a right in Congress because they felt it was better for them in the voter booth? That sort of misbehavior attribution?
Both parties keep abortion and immigration alive because it’s a red meat issue for their bases. To their great credit, a bill was set to pass that would have helped with immigration until Cheatolinni cracked down and his party obeyed even before elections. I have no reasons that believe the same would not happen if Roe were set to be codified in the Constitution. When reasonable people are in charge, the issues are not so great. There is a lot more live and let live. When it is the lunatics—and these days, that means GOP—in charge, everything is a crisis and if it isn’t a crisis then a crisis will be manufactured out of spare parts. It is essential that there is a serious crisis at all times so that people don’t get so bored that they… read books or something.
There's no spinning, LD. Legislation is involved because we, as a society (albeit local) are making the decision to grant exceptions to what would otherwise be deemed murder. Whether or not an action that deprives someone of their life is considered to be murder is a legal decision.
That's slippery language. But hey, if you want to go with this technicality, I think everyone should be allowed to request an abortion at any time for any reasons.
Do you think there should be some hoops that requestors of assisted suicide need to jump through? Do you think they should have to have a full psych eval, for example? Or perhaps they need to try certain other types of therapies and treatments first, and assisted suicide be granted only as a last resort?
Yes, Toni, I am fully aware of the idiotic laws in place in several states right now. The existence of those idiotic laws is a large part of why I am advocating for federal legislation that would supersede those laws.
Whether or not performing an abortion deprives anyone of anything has still to be answered.
Good for the clerk!
NY county clerk refuses to file Texas' fine for doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills
A Texas judge last month ordered Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City, to pay the penalty for allegedly breaking that state's law by prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine.abc7ny.com
f tx
Or... and hear me out... we could all advocate for reasonable federal level laws that would preclude all of this entirely!Awesome. But it's a half-measure. NY ought to expand its shield law, making it a criminal offense in NY to attempt to enforce out-of-state abortion laws in NY against people for actions they took in NY. The statutory penalty should be whatever the penalty the perpetrator tried to inflict was. So the next time Paxton and Landry try this stunt they'll personally face $113,000 fines if they ever set foot in NY.NY county clerk refuses to file Texas' fine for doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills
A Texas judge last month ordered Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City, to pay the penalty for allegedly breaking that state's law by prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine.
f tx
Where do you keep finding these corrupt doctors? If your lifevis populated by people like that, no laws are going to mitigate your misery.
